Introduction
In
our modern time, we are confronted with several disorders which discovered
daily. Due to state-of-the-art technology, many inventions that made us to live
in an “instant” world of comfort but it somehow triggers to complication of
negative effects. Devastated environment, frequent executions of heinous
crimes, banalization of immoral and unethical human conduct such as induced
abortion, pre-marital sex, concubinage and killings are concerns that we are
facing nowadays. The point that the researcher is trying to present is the
effect it subdues to our existence as human beings. The life span we have today
tends to be shorter as we approach every generation. This is the right time to
reflect what is behind this predicament happened in realm per se.
Sciences
are systems of knowledge that present in arena of our battle towards better
life. Specifically, in the field of health care, medicine is very active in
promoting such for it provides medicines, involve in different surgical
operations and cure diseases just to sustain life. In this new trend of medical
technology, since the disorders of short life span due to some common and
uncommon diseases are becoming more prevalent, a new line of research is likely
to be necessary. Consequently, it is now rampant phenomena among highly
industrialized country such as United States,
Australia, Italy, South Korea,
China, Japan, Singapore
and maybe later on if it necessitate by the call for any urgent situation and time
here in Philippines,
it would not be possible. It is the Human Embryonic Stem Cell research. This
HESC research has a goal of identifying the mechanism that governs cell
differentiation and to turn it into specific cell types that can be used for
treating debilitating and life-threatening diseases and injuries. Furthermore,
it enlivens much hope to relieve and to alleviate the human suffering brought
on by the effects of diseases and injuries. According to Stem Cell Information,
stem cells can be a cure to any diseases ranging from Type1 diabetes and heart
diseases to Parkinson’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis. It is a bright light to
many people darkened by disease because of their potential to cure or eliminate
the disorder rather that suppress it as most drugs currently act.
At a rapid pace of scientific
developments has been proceeding over decades. In human genetics as the nature
of HESC research, somehow has this been more true. Every now and then, we may
hear and amaze of new discoveries, procedures, applications or developments.
With these complexities that we have now in the status quo, where are we now
with our life? Do we still accord with values, with ethical norms, with
morality?
These questions are mainstreams of
uncertainties that we hold and continue to challenge our existence as human
being endowed with rationality and moral values and practices that are
objective and universal truths in which it is along with our nature, being.
Notwithstanding, the tremendous therapeutic promise and benefits of HESC
research to human race, still it has met with controversies and oppositions. In
this exposition, what is this HESC research all about that despite its good
possible outcome and greater help to many who need such procedure seems to be cunning
its fecund purpose. What is the stand of the Church, of the Natural Law
tradition? What is this Natural Law Ethics according to St. Thomas Aquinas?
This is the main impetus that pushes
the researcher to conduct a critique from the perspective of morality of HESC
research.
Human Embryonic
Stem Cell
HESCs
are characterized by their capacity for self-renewed and their ability to
differentiate into all types of cells of the body (Ethics of Stem Cell
Research, 2008). One stem cell that have been converted into the desired type,
they can be targeted to the area and eventually replace the damaged cells that
cause several diseases. In the very early embryo these cells are totipotent –
that is, they have the potency to become any kind of body cell. HESCs are
derived in vitro around the fifth day of the embryos’ development (Thomson et
al., 1998). It is a day-5 human embryo consists of approximately of 200-250
cells. Most of these cells are compose of tropoblast considered as the
outermost layer of the blastocyst. For about 30-34 cells are the number of
cells to be harvested from the inner cell mass of blastocyst. In this process
with nature of procedure, it requires the removal of the tropoblast.
Consequently, it will result to disaggregate the blastocysts’ cells as to
eliminate its potential for the development. That is why, most of the
proponents of HESC research argue that the research is morally impermissible
because it involves the unjust killing of the innocent beings.
Eventually,
there are two kinds of stem cell, the human embryonic stem cell and the adult
stem cell. In adult stem cells, the cells are pluripotent—they have the
capacity to become a variety of cells, but not all. Those adult stem cells
(those extracted from the spinal cord and marrow) can be used instead of those
from embryos with the same effect. This is simply not true. Only embryonic stem
cells have the ability to divide into every type of cell in the body
(totipotent), while “adult” stem cells derived from other sources can only develop
into a few types of cells (multipotent) and do not have the vast potential of
embryos (Daniel et al.). In addition to that, many argued that adult stem cells
are difficult to obtain, very hard to coax into developing into other tissues
and, consequently, their use would involve much more time and money to obtain
the desired results. Up until very recently, this was generally true. Thus, the
researcher much prefers the human embryonic stem cells. This kind of stem cell
is now at stake as a particular kind of ethical problem as the very much
concern of this research.
When life begins?
Human
embryos are human beings. This issue of when a human being begins to exist is,
however, a contested one. The most prevalent standard view is that a human
being begins to exist with the emergence of the one-cell zygote at
fertilization. At this stage, human embryos are said to be “whole living
member[s] of the species homo sapiens … [which] possess the epigenetic
primordial for self-directed growth into adulthood, with their determinateness
and identity fully intact” (George & Gomez-Lobo 2002, 258). On this
account, it confers that human embryo has the right to live and not to be
killed. This view is grounded in the assumption that human beings have the same
moral status at all stages of their lives in possessing this right.
However,
some human embryo does not have the moral status requisite for a right to life.
This suggests that only some higher-order mental capacity (or capacities) that
grounds the right to life. While there is no consensus about the capacities
that are necessary for the right to life, some of the capacities that have been
proposed include reasoning, self-awareness, and agency (Kuhse & Singer
1992, Tooley 1983, Warren 1973). Thus, it presumes that for those who have such
lack these capacities like infants are excluded on the moral status as of
possessing this right. This presents a challenge for those who hold that the
non-consequentialist constraints on killing human children and adults apply to
early human infants. Some reject that these constraints apply to infants, and
allow that there may be circumstances where it is permissible to sacrifice
infants for the greater good (McMahan 2007b).
On the other hand, some grant and
somehow accept that human embryo lack the properties or capacities to a right
to life, but hold that they possess an intrinsic value that calls for a measure
of respect and places at least some moral constraints on their use: “The life
of a single human organism commands respect and protection … no matter in what
form or shape, because of the complex creative investment it represents and
because of our wonder at the divine or evolutionary processes that produce new
lives from old ones.” (Dworkin, l992). There are, however, divergent views
about the equal respect of embryos and somehow command limitations exist on
their use. Some opponents of HESC research hold that the treatment of human
embryos as mere research tools always fails to manifest proper respect for
them.
Christian
Perspective
With
the vast issue about the morality of Human Embryonic Stem Cell research, the
researcher can philosophize that it truly points and directs us to study and
scrutinize its unprecedented implications in this-world of genetic engineering
and to our human existence as well. Different views from different realm of
ethicist, different perspective from religious sector and even to the plausible
opinions of person in authority are being raised just to question the morality
it connotes to human race.
Consistently, the Catholic Church
stands and firmly holds its doctrine in promoting respect, protection and
promotion of human life from conception to its natural end. Both the Church and
the Philippine Constitution tangled up recognizing the sacredness of life from
the time of conception. From fertilization through fetal life, until birth the
human being must be protected (Alova, 1999). Indeed, human being must be
respected-as-a-person from the very first instant of his existence. At the
Second Vatican Council, the church for her part presented once again to modern
man her constant and certain doctrine according to which:
“Life once conceived, must be
protected with the utmost care; abortion and infanticide are abominable
crimes.”
More recently, the Charter of the
Rights of the Family, published by the Holy See, confirmed that “Human life
must be absolutely respected and protected from the moment of conception.”
The
Catholic Church gives emphasis for high appreciation to every human life that
opposes the direct killing or injuring of any innocent human being, even an
embryo. Furthermore, she believes that human life begins at conception and
conception is the beginning to possess the right to life. In addition to that,
here is the authoritative teaching of the church stated in Pope John Paul II’s
encyclical letter, “Evangelium Vitae,” no. 60:
Furthermore, what is at stake is so important that, from the
standpoint of moral obligation, the mere probability that a human person is
involved would suffice to justify an absolutely clear prohibition of any
intervention aimed at killing a human embryo. Precisely for this reason, over
and above all scientific debates and those philosophical affirmations to which
the Magisterium has not expressly committed itself, the Church has always
taught and continues to teach that the result of human procreation, from the
first moment of its existence, must be guaranted that unconditional respect
which is morally due to the human being in his or her totality and unity as
body and spirit: “The human being is to be respected and treated as human
person from the moment of conception; and therefore from that same moment his
rights as a person must be recognized,
among which , in the first place, is the inviolable right of every innocent human
being to life.”
The
church with her teaching is really standing firm in securing and protecting the
life from exploitation or from using them as an object of experimentation.
Thus, in doing such thing, it constitutes a crime against the dignity of a person,
of human being who has the same right and respect owed to a child or to adult
person once born, anyone just as to every person.
Christian
ethics puts stem cell research into question precisely because it involves the
manipulation of human embryo or fetus. Stem cell research in a form of IVF(in
vitro) or a laboratory fertilization, which involves conception outside the
womb by artificial means.
Ultimately
each of us will die anyway, or we should say, we are all destined to die but
that gives no one a right to kill us. Our society does not permit lethal
experiments on terminally ill patients or condemned prisoners on the pretext
that they will die soon anyway. Likewise, the fact that an embryonic human
being is at risk in case of being abandoned by his or her parents gives no
individual or government a right to intervene and directly kill that human
being first.
St. Thomas
Aquinas’ Natural Law
The natural law as expounded by
Aquinas is nothing but a participation of the eternal law in the rational
creature that is man. Natural law in this context is the particularity of the
eternal law in the human person. In so far as God has a plan or purpose for all
things, both animate and inanimate, so then he is said to have set up the
nature of the human person in such a way that all his actions should take.
From this also comes the dictate of
reason to avoid what is not in agreement with the nature of human persons. In
here, Aquinas appears to be confident that each person has the innate
capability to discover within himself some objective, universal, and necessary
laws of right conduct and of morality. Law, therefore, in this sense, can be
considered as an ordering of some kind whereby the pattern of activities of a being
reaches its perfection or proper end, which is the very reason why that being
is created in the very first place by the supreme creator and divine author of
nature which is God Himself (Fernandez, 2006).
Consequently, the nature of the
human person is viewed as constantly conserving man in being and is Himself the
fulfillment of human striving. Thus, the action of man as rational being should
reflect respect and reverence toward God as the ultimate author of nature and
preserver of life and everything that is good.
For Aquinas, therefore, natural law
in essence is an integral part of the divine law or plan for the entire
universe. Most Aquinas’ teachings in this respect are found in his magnum opus,
the Summa Theologica or the Summary of Faith. Here, he taught that the moral
law consists in the following the innate and natural tendencies or inclinations
of our nature as humans. These basic and natural human tendencies or
inclinations that are essentially present in all of us are: self – preservation
or survival, that is, man has to preserve himself in existence; propagation of
our species, that is, to unite sexually to produce offspring for the
continuance of the next generation of the human race; to live in peace and in
harmony with other men, that is, just and fair dealings with others, and to
seek for truth and knowledge of God, that is, to use his will and intellect to
know the truth and seek the good, including his highest good, which is eternal
happiness with God (Fernandez, 2006).
In Aquinas’ ethical framework,
…the natural law belongs to those things to which a man is
inclined naturally; and among these it is proper to man to be inclined to act
according to reason…Hence the [first] precept of law [is] good is to be done
and promoted, and evil is to be avoided. All other precepts of the natural law
are based upon this; so that all things which the practical reason naturally
apprehends as man’s good belong to the precepts of the natural law under the
form of things to be done or avoided… Therefore, the order of the precepts of
the natural law is according to the order of natural inclinations. (Quoted in
Pojman 2002:44).
Moreover,
the principle of the inviolability of human life springs from the essential
belief that life, any human life, is of infinite value as it is a sacred and
precious gift from the Almighty Creator. The importance or value of this life
is complementary or the same to other human beings in this world. Thus, it can
never be sacrificed or exploited by whatever means or reasons.
In
this context, no ones life is important that others. All lives have the same
worth and no point that life cannot be merit against the other. Each individual
life is much important and it itself beyond measure or immeasurable.
This principle applies to every
human life, including the life of the unborn (fetus) that is still in the
process of developing in the womb of the mother. The unborn, even in the
earliest stages of growth does have all the basic natural right to life that
must be protected from any harm (Fernandez, 2006).
Thus, equal dignity and respect must
be given to every human life. Accordingly, fetuses or embryos have the same
reverence with the adult one. Our status in the society does not tolerate us to
quantify or measure the value of life.
Under the ethical principle of natural
law, each person has a natural right to live and to continue in existence.
Anything that will obstruct or put in jeopardy that natural basic drive and
tendency goes against what is considered good. It is therefore morally
justified for anyone to do whatever is necessary to protect that right,
provided no unjust harm is done to others (Fernandez, 2006).
Hence, the human embryonic stem cell
research is irrelevant in a sense though it protects of prolongs the life of a person;
still it provides unjust dealing or destruction to others specifically to the
innocent embryonic possessing life.
On the other hand, the principle of
stewardship based on natural law inclines us to believe and convince that all
life comes from God. Thus, we are not the owner of this life. It is only a
borrowed one. We do not have the same authority to do whatever what we want.
Notwithstanding, we just only owe this life. We only have given the power to
take good care of it. Subsequently, we have to propagate it, share it, and fulfill
it to the fullest.
It is therefore morally wrong or
unjustifiable to commit actions that can harm others specifically human
embryonic stem cell research since stewardship entails proper protection and
responsible care of what the Almighty has given. It goes without saying
therefore that it is only God who has dominion over life and our bodies. Our
duty is to take care of it until God takes it back from us in His own good time
(Timbreza, 1993).
Consequently, we human beings do not
own it but rather, we are just caretakers to protect it as our enormous
responsibility. It is not just a personal or individual responsibility. It is a
collective obligation for it must involve the whole community.
Conclusion
As
human being, we possess that faculty which somehow dominates other living
creatures, our rationality. Being rational is our identity to have that
capacity to think and to possess will. Thus, we have that supreme worth and
profound dignity due to the fact that we are rational agents. Whereupon, we can
think and decide what goal we may pursue and what we want to our life. Thereby,
our capacity to determine our vintage uniqueness as human being endowed with
rational faculty lies on ourselves on how we could find our destiny or end as a
self-directed and conscious being. Moreover, treating human beings as objects,
manipulating or exploiting is undignified act and absolutely not in accordance
to its nature.
The
value that he endowed is the true manifestation of his nature. Consequently, a
person cannot be treated as an object of experimentation at any means of his
existence. The worth belongs to other person and to the one who value it and it
is unconditioned worth. We have the responsibility to respect each other as
human beings. Respect on their nature is much important and that really matters
on the person.
The
issue about when life begins remains doubtful in the field of science but then
on the side of the church and natural law are still pinning on their own stands
that life begins as early as fertilization occurs. Given that doubt, the
researcher would rather say that it is unacceptable or permissible immoral to
get involved in such kind of practice or research. The presumptions that the
science deals with regarding the beginning of life are still uncertain
vis-à-vis to the argument of the church and natural law regarding this matter
which the researcher prefers to stand for. Consequently, life starts from
fertilization and indeed capable of possessing rights and dignity as human
being.
Human
being should be the ground of morality in which it value life, truth and
goodness. Thus, the use of human embryos or fetuses, either inside or outside
the mothers’ womb, as the object of experimentation, enacts a crime against the
persons’ human dignity, the right to life. Indeed, life is sacred.
Hence,
with our rationality, we have that capacity to think and to exercise our own
freedom and reason in determining what is good for us and for others. We are
the makers, arbiters and promulgators of goodness to human race.
Human
dignity is innate in us. It is intrinsic attributes within us. It speaks of
what we are, who we are and determines or guides how we might live in, live by,
live for. Without this, we are nothing; we are empty. So, think as rational,
decide as rational, and act as rational by preserving life, protecting life and
propagating our species.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
Alova, Rosario (1999). A handbook in bioethics. Makati City:
Bookmark Inc.
Fernandez, Ambong (2006). Ethics
for Today’s Inquiring Filipino. Philippines: LOPEZ Printing Press
Moga,
M. S.J. (2007). The Worlds of Human Morality. Makaty City, Philippines:
St. Pauls Philippines.
Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2008). Ethics
of Stem Cell Research
Timbreza,
Florintino (2007). Health Care Ethics.
Mandaluyong City: National Bookstore
UST Department of Bioethics (1994). Bioethics: A coming concern. Philippines: UST Printing
Vatican Council II The Conciliar ans Post
Conciliar Documents (1984). Pasay City,
Philippines:
Paulines Publishing House
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